Using Illegals to Prosecute BP

August 07, 2007
Using Illegal Immigrants To Go After Border Patrol
Relying on the testimony of illegal immigrants to prosecute federal U.S. officers is on the rise with yet another Border Patrol agent ordered to stand trial for murder thanks to evidence provided by relatives of a confrontational Mexican man shot after crossing the border illegally.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Nicholas Corbett said he feared for his life after apprehending the group of illegal border crossers in January about 150 yards north of the Mexico-Arizona border between Bisbee and Douglas. The group’s leader, Francisco Javier Dominguez, became aggressive and attacked the federal agent with rocks after being detained.

Agent Corbett shot Dominguez in self defense and was subsequently charged with murder. The key prosecution witnesses are not only illegal immigrants related to Dominguez, they were coached by the Mexican government before U.S. authorities even spoke to them and the Mexican consul in Douglas specifically told them that “it is very important to us that the policeman does not come out clean over this.”

So the three witnesses who made the journey north—two of them Dominguez’s brothers and the girlfriend of one of the brothers—have gladly obliged, specially since Mexican officials have provided them with free food, an apartment in Tucson, transportation and U.S. work visas.

Their testimony in Cochise County Superior Court this week was enough to convince a judge that the agent must stand trial for murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide even though defense attorneys presented compelling evidence of inconsistencies between the illegal aliens’ testimony and statements they had made to Cochise County Sheriff’s investigators in January.

Another high-profile case that relied on testimony from a criminal illegal alien sent two veteran Border Patrol agents to prison for 11 and 12 years. The agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Campeon, intercepted an admitted Mexican drug dealer in El Paso and shot him in the buttocks yet prosecutors granted the offender immunity to testify against the officers.

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